Friday, October 15, 2010

My Favorite Aliens Part Three

That's right, the final chapter in this journey across space. Granted, this wasn't finished yesterday like I hoped. But that's simply because it's been proven that there is less time during the week and therefore it is impossible to get anything done after I get home.

ANYWHO!

5. Advisors

I promise you, this is the last we'll be hearing from Half-Life!Geez, these things. I think it would be very upsetting to see one of these in real life. Imagine if you will a giant cybernetic slug that can crush you with it's mind. Sure, Vulcans can mind-meld but Advisors can, and have, twisted people like licorice and thrown them across a building.

Now, for anyone unfamiliar, the Advisors are like bureaucratic middlemen appointed by the Combine to rule over Earth. The Combine are, of course, an alien empire which we are lead to believe has enslaved countless different species, planets, galaxies and even Universes.

Again, either Valve didn't care enough to consider the implications of that or this is the single most efficient military force ever devised. I don't need to remind you how stupidly big space is, at our present state we cannot completely control a single planet. What kind of cold, unsympathetic, logical mind has the mental capacity to organize and weaponize a whole Universe let alone several.

I think the Combine are really under appreciated as enemies. The most we know about them really comes from the bumbling trans-human soldiers we fight throughout the game, when the awful truth is that the Combine is a Lovecraftian cosmic horror, totally inescapable and truly mind-boggling in scope. But it's worse then that, they're bureaucrats.I like the Advisors because as a creature, they're not intimidating looking, pathetic even. They're these huge grubs, they don't have arms, or eyes, or any kind of sensory organs. Sure, in Episode Two they actually "hatch" and can live without their life-support, but it's still terrifying. One, because they seem to be totally invulnerable and two, because they're a stark reminder of what we might become. They come from a highly advanced society, they no longer need their bodies and so they start to wither and become useless. Who's to say we won't become like that when we become more advanced as well? The Advisors are totally dependent of their technology. Technology, and they're horrifying telepathic powers.

4. Martians

Imagine the above, only more squid-like and working on a much smaller scale and you've got the grandparent of every alien ever (At least the good ones). The best part is that the Martians from The War of the Worlds were totally unlike what people at that time thought aliens would be like. When people during Victorian Times thought aliens, they thought handsome Aryan men from another world. What did H.G. Wells suggest? Hideous brain-slugs with tentacles that drank Human blood. Just read this description of them when they first appear:A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively.Cash.

It might seem like Wells was just trying to create the most grotesque monster he could, well that's because he was but he also had science backing him up. You see, Wells had a theory that as Mankind became more advanced our bodies would atrophy as our brains grew larger, so much so that eventually we would become little more than brains with hands sticking out of the side.

Aaaaaaaand, that's were the Advisors came from. Posers.

But it's not just the Martians themselves that make them so wonderful, it's that when they take over a planet, they do it in style.Tripods are the DeLoreans of war machines.

3. The Thing

Just look at that. It's the opposite of the last two aliens, it doesn't need high technology, it's only weapon is fear.

Jeez, I remember when I first watched it. I heard all about this wonderful movie about an alien trapped in the Antarctic and I just had to see it. Eventually, I convinced my mother to buy it and watch it with my sister and I. The fact that the DVD case had a picture of what looked like a screaming face trapped in ice was just foreshadowing of what was to come.

The movie built up slowly, thankfully Kurt Russel's beard was there to keep things interesting when suddenly this happened...

...and I was like "YES.".

It just got better. Probably the best part is when a person infected by The Thing dies. His head rips itself from the burning body and falls off the table it was put on. After that, the head sprouts legs and eye-stalks and crawls away.I'd like to think my mother realizes what a horrible, horrible mistake she made in watching this movie.

2. Anything by H.P. Lovecraft

Similar to how the Martians were the precursors to the Combine, Lovecraft and his menagerie of cosmic horrors are responsible for The Thing.

Simply put, Howard created the most weirdly fear inspiring monsters of the early 20th century (and arguably the rest of the 20th century if you don't count a certain mustachioed man from around the 1930's.). If I were to put all his creatures in their own spots it would take up a huge amount of space on this list.

The Great Race of YithArguably the least threatening of his creatures, which isn't saying much, the Yithians are a race of telepaths that can hop from one body to another. They inhabited the Earth millions of years ago and built huge libraries underneath modern-day Australia. The Yithians had a war with another species, the Flying Polyps, and has a mass -evacuation. It was at that time they inhabited the bodies of giant primordial cone-shaped mollusks. Even later then that, they turned themselves into beetles.

It gets better.

Mi-GoThe Mi-Go are giant fungus-crustaceans from Pluto (which they call Yuggoth). They've come to Earth to mine for rare minerals and steal people's brains. They then take these brains back to Yuggoth. Also, the Mi-Go do not use spaceships, they just up and fly through space as is, in nothing more than their yeasty, crunchy carapace.

Elder ThingsLike the Yithians, the Elder Things colonized Earth millions of years ago, especially Antarctica. Once there, they built huge cities in the then lush, tropical environment. Over time however, the polar regions began to freeze, but that's not what go rid of the Elder Things, it was what they created here on Earth...

Shoggoths

These protoplasmic blobs were mindless servants to the Elder Things, they were used to create the great basalt cities on the Antarctic. However, the Shoggoths rebelled and wiped their former masters from the Earth.

Just so we're clear here, Shoggoths are blobs that can assume any shape, any size, can produce organs at will and live in the Antarctic.

That's right, The Thing is a Shoggoth.

And number one is...

1. ...No.

No, don't act like you're surprised. You knew this was going to happen just as well as I did. You knew that after all that, after the Prawns, Tholians, Buggers, Pod-People, Grovebacks, Antlions, Brazilians, Vortigaunts, Borg, Pythagorians, Martians, Yithians, Elder Things, Mi-Go, Things and even the entire Universal Union, number one would of course be Dale and his jerk friends.I have no way of explaining why I fell so totally in love with these kitchen utensils. But if I had to guess I would say it was the screeching voice, the utter loathing of anything non-Dalek, the sheer absurdity of their battle-armor. Really, there's nothing not to like about the Daleks. They're at the same time adorable and yet deadly.